


They Do Not Matter, Mr. Klienman

by SmolAndDepressed



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: I'm tired, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2018-12-10 00:57:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11680671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmolAndDepressed/pseuds/SmolAndDepressed
Summary: Apathetic teacher tries to teach emotionally exhausted Jared.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Relax, Evan's in here. It just takes a while.

The bell rung loudly through the halls and people shuffled past each other to get into the small stuffy rooms. The last into the advanced calculus was a short-ish, skinny senior with thick glasses. As he passed the teacher’s desk, he tossed a small silver wrapper into the trash bin.

Her voice, although loud, had that soft lilt that made every student want to die on the spot. “Alright, will everyone please find their assigned seats?” The boy slouched down into his seat, pushing his backpack next to him. He yawned, opening his mouth wide.

“Mr. Klienman! Is that gum I see in your mouth?” Jared rolled his eyes at her. “Spit that out at once!” He glared at her on his way up to the bin.

“Thank you...Now. Last week, we reviewed the basic mathematic skills that will serve you well on your tests, and later, college. Including basic graphs-”

Jared spoke up, “You say that as if any of these fucking dunces are going to choose to go to college.”

“Mr. Klienman-”

“Even if they do, they’re so going to drop out.”

“I am doing my best to prevent that, Mr Klienman, although the clearest path you have created for yourself is directly towards the principal’s office.”

“Excuse me?”

“If there are no further interruptions, I’ll continue.” She straightened herself and wrote on the whiteboard. “As with the sine function, analysis of the cosine function will show that the graph corresponds to the unit circle.”

Jared let his eyes wander over the miscellaneous posters on the otherwise blank walls of his class. He started to zone out, to think about those three weeks ago. 

“Mr. Klienman, would you like to try?"She peered at him, smiling the way only teachers seemed able.

“I-I, uh, don’t seem to have it in me this morning. Pick on someone else.” His face went red.

“Very well.”

He pulled out a blank paper and his red pen.

“Periodic implies that it repeats itself. Periodically, of course. For both sine and cosine, it is repeated on both directions at the interval of 2 pi.”

Jared thought about what to write. He’d been good with words, he’d been told. Sometimes people would tell him he was a master, but only about things he really liked or wanted. He could hear her talking at the front. Blah, blah, intervals of 1/2 pi, blah blah. He knew that.


	2. Chapter 2

He uncapped his pen and started scribbling words.

“Periodic functions in particular are valuable to apply to certain aspects of your life. For example...” Her eyes searched the room for some kid who hadn’t cared to pay attention. “Mr. Klienman, what are some things that interest you?”

“Bo-uh, s-stories?”

“Stories? You enjoy writing them?” She pointed at his paper.  
He looked down, at the paper addressed to an Evan Hansen. “Uh, no. Not really.”

“So you enjoy hearing them, watching them on television?”

“Living them, ma’am.”

“Living your stories.” He could hear the mock interest in her voice. “I was leading up to a different point, but this intrigues me. Please, do go on.”

“I’d really rather n-”

“Explain to the class how you ‘live’ a story.”

“You, um, you just...” He took a deep breath and collected himself. “You know those stories in the news, on the radio? We can all r-relate to a few, at least. There are times where it ends up as situational irony, ma’am.”

“Oh?”

“You want one outcome, a different, less favorable one occurs.”

“Indeed. Very interesting point, Mr. Klienman. Now, a story is a method of communication. Most methods of communication rely on sound in one way or another. Even as you read, you hear a voice in your brain reading to you.”

Jared slouched back down and kept writing his letter.

“Sound itself is a periodic function-Jared!”

He snapped his head up, and dropped his pen on the floor. She used his full name? He had to be equally as bold. “What do you want?”

“The audacity to continue writing as I spoke to you not twenty seconds ago is, to be frank, appalling.” Her ears turned red, but her face was smiley, and calm. “Give me that note.”

“You can’t have this.” He covered it with his arm as she walked closer.

“I can and I certainly will, Mr. Klienman.”

“It’s...personal, to say the least! I’ll put it away.”

“It’s not too personal for my lecture, I hope. You wouldn’t be writing it in the middle of it otherwise.” She glared and her voice dropped to an almost growl. “Give. It. To. Me.”

“N-no.”

“You forfeit your right to privacy when you interfere with my lecture. Give it.” She smiled sickeningly sweet. “I don’t need to read it to the rest of the class. This is between you,” she put one hand on his shoulder, her other opened up expectingly. “and me.”

“I will, if you tell me you won’t read it at all.”

She sighed. “Fine. Hand it over.” She snatched it and crumpled it. “I trust that there will be no more disruptions?” She stalked back to her desk, enjoying Jared’s flinch hen she crudely stuffed the letter in her desk."And perhaps,” she slammed the desk drawer shut, “we all learned something about taking our personal property into the classroom?”

Jared clenched his fists and stiffly turned his head. He shut his eyes, trying to block it all out. The empty seat next to him was still there. 

“Although far too much of our time has been spent on some...silly note, I would like to return to the lesson plan, provided there will be no more dramatics.” She sat down in her chair. “As a general announcement to the class in its entirety, I’m sure that whatever problems you are going through feel like life or death, like some note means everything in the world, but at the end of the day-”

“It’s not.”

“Excuse me?”

“It isn’t life or death.”

“That’s right, Mr. Klienman. Say it again. Let it sink in.”

“It isn’t life or death.” Jared stared at her dead in the eyes. “It’s forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness for whom, Mr. Klienman?”

“Oh, I say something interesting to you and it’s not dramatics anymore? It doesn’t matter-” he would’ve said ‘to you,’ but she cut him off.

“I’m glad you’re starting to get some sense into you.” He shot a deadly glare, and she looked away. He reset his glasses back to the bridge of his nose.

“As I was saying, absolutely nothing you feel is of any value to anyone at all Simply because you are young, your feelings mean nothing at all. The decisions you make now will not impact your later life. You’ll forget all about what problems you have now. The only thing that matters now,” she looked toward the back of the class, “is mathematics.”


	3. Chapter 3

“There’s a contradiction and a half.”

“There are times, I would really wish you would be silent.”

“You say nothing matters now. I could walk out and nothing would be important to us.” He stood up. “Frankly, I am not to say how it would actually matter, because not one of you sorry assholes would relate!” He pointed angrily at the vacant desk to his left.

“How old are you, Mr. Klienman?” “Seventeen. Why?” He started toward the door slowly.

“Seventeen. You are still a child.” She sat up straighter. “Don’t touch that doorknob. You won’t like what I’ll do.”

Jared sneered. “Oh? What could you do? Hurt my feelings?”

“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” She pulled open her desk drawer as Jared reached out toward the door. He looked over his shoulder and stiffened.

“That’s. Not. Yours.”

“If I see it in my classroom, it’s mine.”

“It’s Evan’s.” His face tuned to a light red. She held the letter up. And started reading.

 _“Dear Evan Hansen._.. Who is Evan?”

“In this world of strictly mathematics?” Jared made sure the mockery was evident in his voice. “Nothing.” His eyes started to water.

“He is no one! Why would someone like that matter that much?”

“To you, apathetic bitch, Evan is nothing. Not to me.”

“That means nothing to me,” she spat back. “Your ‘feelings’ mean nothing to me. The only thing that matters to me is that you sit in that chair and shut your mouth.”

He gripped the handle tighter, (“Mr. Klienman?”) and twisted a little (Mr. Klienman!). “Hey, you know what? Fuck you.” He couldn’t keep himself quiet.


	4. Chapter 4

She cleared her throat. “ _Dear Evan Hansen,_  
 _They stopped looking for you. I know they have. I had so much faith in society for wanting to find you, you’re too young to drop off the face of the earth. I swear, it’s part my collapse._  
 _I’ll keep this one short; Evan I lo_...” She stopped and her mouth gaped open.  
  
“I don’t care anymore.” He smiled as the first tears fell. Jared watched her ball up his letter  
and it hit him on the shoulder when she threw it. He bent down to pick it up.  
  
“Let’s find something you do care about.” She stood. Three weeks suspension. You may leave.”  
  
Jared Klienman, weighed down by the past month, laughed through his free falling tears. “You don’t even remember him?”  
  
“I prefer not to think about such things. My job is to maintain order."


	5. Chapter 5

Jared’s voice was practically a whisper. “He was on the announcements. June third. Doesn’t that mean anything?”  
  
“God damnit, boy! I will maintain order in this classroom or so help me!”  
  
“What could you possibly do?”  
  
“Me?” She slouched, defeated. “I couldn’t do anything, boy.”  
  
“He’s already missing.”  
  
“And that, Mr. Klienman, is the worst thing.”  
  
“I mean, Evan could be alive. He mi-"he was cut off by his own sob. “He might be dead.”  
  
“Fine. Go. Walk out that classroom door and disappear, loverboy."  
  
“I will! I’ll go find him. I can...I’ll just...”  
  
  
“He’s lost. He’s gone, boy. Can’t you see that?”  
  
He wiped at his face with his sleeve, drying it a little. “Wha-what do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, the sooner you learn not to feel, the better off you’ll be. Mathematics are the key. There’s one problem, and one correct solution. It’s always there.”  
  
“What the hell is  wrong with you?”  
  
“I am an upstanding-functioning member of the community, Mr. Klienman. You’d better start directing such questions toward yourself! I have nothing to hide, Mr. Klienman.”  
  
“Oh, pray tell what I have to hide, Ms. Unfeeling.”  
“Why did he run in the first place?”  
  
“Wh-what?”  
  
“I noticed you two ignoring each other more recently. Was it, at least in part, your fault?”  
  
“No, no. No. I’m going to find him and prove you wrong. He’s gotta be in the cellar. I’ve got three weeks, thanks to you.”  
  
“The...no. You’re lying. They’d have found him.”  
  
“Really? We built it. Together. Less than a month ago. He’s... gotta be.” He leaned his forehead against the door.   
  
He felt so unbelievably alone.  
  
He remembered Evan gave himself so many slivers...it took them days to make because they took so many breaks trying to get them all out. It rained once. They didn’t work much. They sat together, on their sides, facing each other. They’d fallen asleep like that.  
  
“If you’re so sure, Mr. Klienman.”  
  
“Ma’am?”  
  
“Yes?” she rubbed the bridge of her nose and let out a frustrated sigh.  
  
“I hope you’ll excuse me.”  
  
“By all means, Mr. Klienman.” She looked up at him, absolutely pissed. “Go.”  
  
Jared took a deep breath and opened the door.   
  
“Now, as I was saying about periodic functions in terms of sine versus cosine,” she looked over at Jared. It was almost an apologetic look.  
  
He heard her as he walked down the hallway. “Their primary difference being their placement on the graph...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the end yet.


	6. Chapter 6

Three weeks.

Three blissful weeks. 

No arguments. 

Just calm and math. 

He'd be back, she knew.

But she was happy.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FFFFUCK I FORGOT THIS EXISTED

The bell rang out loudly through the halls, which quickly emptied. AP-Geometry was quiet for the fist twenty-eight minutes, but the sound of small laughs floated into room 308.

Jared knocked on the door, holding his hand away from the door, keeping something out of the view from anyone on the other side of the door.

"Cassidy, can you see who's at the door please?"

"Yes, miss."

Almost everyone was shocked at the familiar voice they heard.

"Sorry I'm late. My, ah, _companion_ had some trouble finding his way to school this morning."

The teacher rose from her desk and made her way briskly to the door, swaying slightly. "Companion?" she echoed, putting a hand on the wall.

"Right, yes." Jared nodded, looking off to the side, smiling a bit more fondly than she'd seen him in such a long time. "I believe," he started, pulling whatever was behind the door closer to him, "that the new student should be announced."

"New student?" She went back to her desk, checking her attendance sheet. "I hadn't been notified of a new student..."

"I doubt you would. Would you like to meet him?"

"Who?"

"Evan Hansen." Jared led this other person-a little taller, considerably thinner- into the room by his hand. "His schedule's been matched with mine to help him adjust back into a school life."

She shivered and sat on her desk. She looked so tired, dark circles and pale. "That's wonderful." She rubbed her eyes. "I've also got an announcement to make. I am...Unfit to continue my job here. I'll be leaving next week to deal with some health issues."

Jared's smile faltered than dropped. "I believe I can respect your state of being, ma'am. Won't be any trouble." He tugged Evan to the back of the class to sit and listen to her lecture.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll get back to my other stuff later.


End file.
